Familiar names top US News best-hospital rankings for heart care
July 11, 2008 | Steve Stiles
HEART.ORG
New York, NY - If the US News & World Report rankings for cardiovascular care were Wimbledon, this year it would be the Cleveland Clinic in the role of Rafael Nadal—or Venus Williams, depending on one's point of view.
The magazine's 2008 rankings for best hospitals for "heart and heart surgery" are out, with probably few surprises among the top 10 centers on the list. The Mayo Clinic trails in second place, with Johns Hopkins Hospital a distant third, as they might say on ESPN.
The publication's annual list is closely watched by both the public and hospital marketing departments but, as reported by heartwire in previous years, has drawn criticism for, some say, taking outcomes numbers out of context, considering criteria of questionable importance, and using methodology that excludes some worthy centers. But it also earns praise in some quarters for helping patients take control of their own healthcare.
The heart and heart-surgery category, as often occurs in the public media, combines two separate disciplines the public often has trouble distinguishing. Still, probably few would deny that the list's top-ranked centers provide excellent cardiovascular and surgical care.
In fact, the rankings were to a large extent determined by centers' reputations among a sample of 200 cardiologists and cardiac surgeons, who were asked "to list five hospitals they consider among the best in their specialty for difficult cases, without taking into account cost or location." Centers were scored, with 100 as the maximum, with equal weight given to "reputation, death rate, and care-related factors such as nursing and patient services," according to the magazine.
US News & World Report top 10 for heart and heart surgery for 2008
Rank
Score
1. Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland, OH)
100.0
2. Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN)
81.0
3. Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore, MD)
52.5
4. Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, MA)
49.5
5. Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston, MA)
48.7
6. New York-Presbyterian (New York, NY)
47.7
7. Texas Heart Institute at St Luke's Episcopal Hospital (Houston, TX)
46.2
8. Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC)
39.6
9. Barnes-Jewish Hospital at Washington University (St Louis, MO)
35.5
10. University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center
34.6
1. US News & World Report. Best hospitals: Heart and heart surgery. July 11, 2008. Available here.
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